My home automation

roasty · 29 Jul 2015

Hi all,

My second attempt at home automation, we recently moved to a bigger place and I've redone the automation, keeping the bits that worked well in the old house.

It's a work in progress, but thought it might be of interest.

Iggifer · 29 Jul 2015

Run out of cable ties?

I do quite like the homemade server cabinet though. I've lived in flats smaller than your plant room!

roasty · 29 Jul 2015

I'll get some pics of the other cabinets, there are 3, two are homemade.
Thanks for the comments!

roasty · 29 Jul 2015

Cabinet 2, I spent a while on this one.

roasty · 29 Jul 2015

Relay cabinet 1 build in progress

Iggifer · 29 Jul 2015

Cabinet 2 is much more like it! What kind of ventilation have you got? It looks pretty full

roasty · 29 Jul 2015

Here's how I interfaced to the Galaxy GD96, in the middle you'll notice an RS232 <-> RS485 converter which I've connected across the data line of the alarm. It's fairly easy to read the data off this serial link and use it to do useful stuff without the need for separate sensors for alarm and HA stuff.

roasty · 29 Jul 2015

Hi, You can't see the back door, but it has a couple of big mains fans in it, that slot in the floor is where the air comes in, and it's sucked through and out the back fans. Works pretty well, but in all honesty I tend to keep the doors open now, you can't hear the fan noise from the main house

unclebob1 · 30 Jul 2015

Wow... If thats the space i'd need to sort out my home automation i'll give up now- need to buy a bigger house first!

Looking good though!

You have a couple of pi's in the second pic, is that what is driving everything?

Also you have a fair few pumps on the CH loop, no zone valves in sight, what/are there any controls for zoning?

Lastly, how are the two boilers working together? (I started a thread a while back and conclusion was no point unless using a proper controlling device between the two!)

roasty · 30 Jul 2015

Hi Bob, yep those 4 raspberry pis drive everything, they do dmx for the lights and you'll notice a couple of external rs232 for serial comms, all the relays and inputs are via pokeys 56e and I use i2c for temperature sensing

roasty · 30 Jul 2015

Hi Bob,
Yep the pumps are for the various heating zones, there are 4 floors, so a zone for each, then one for underfloor and the final one is a flat plate heatex for domestic hot water. No zone valves, I don't like them and with multiple pumps I can better control the flow for each zone, both by pump speed and the union valves.

Water speed is important to me, that big black cylinder is a 1000 litre thermal store, I want the return temps quite low to ensure good stratification

roasty · 30 Jul 2015

Hi Bob,

I went for two boilers as I needed a fair few btu output and I also wanted resilience and reliability.

I use the rasp pis and a bank of temp sensors on the thermal store to trigger the boilers. If the tank gets cold or the rate of heat change is high, I use both, otherwise I cycle between the two on a daily basis

unclebob1 · 30 Jul 2015

care to share the technical details? I'm doing something which seems very similar - but im at the start of my project! - using 1wire (DS1820B) to get temperature, and using byvac relay board to then drive a 240v bistable latching relay.

Temprature readings are stored in mysql,

Everything is working on the bench for short times, but have found a few bugs to sort out on the temp reading/recording side (every pi wants to get readings for every sensor regardless of it being connected to that pi or another!) and also my python code seems to die after an unknown time...

Relay side working fine, and that same setup can be used for lighting or anything else that runs off 240v really!

OwainDIYer · 30 Jul 2015

roasty said:
Here's how I interfaced to the Galaxy GD96,

Tha needs a grommit on the mains input hole.

unclebob1 · 30 Jul 2015

PS - like the idea of tapping into the alarm panel to find the state of various sensors! i was toying with putting two contacts on the windows... this way i just need one set of cables between alarm and pi, and lots of code to decode whats being sent!

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My home automation

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